


244. swan songs

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [281]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 22:44:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10558944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: All of the other subjects came out right, but Helena and Sarah only have one wing each.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: body horror]

All of the other subjects came out right, but Helena and Sarah only have one wing each. When they’re younger they’re kept in their own chamber, away from the other girls in the lab – though they’ll only learn that later – and they hold hands to see if they can fly. They can’t. They leap and they fall, over and over.

It was an interesting idea, in theory: splice girl-DNA with swan-DNA, see what happens. This is the domain of scientists who want to make monsters. And they did. They made children with black eyes and faces rimmed with white feathers, children with mottled combinations of wings and hands. Some of their siblings can’t walk right. Some of them can’t speak.

Helena can’t speak – well, can’t speak _right_. Too many teeth in her mouth, that’s the problem, but she can speak through them. Both of them can walk. Neither of them can fly. Sarah has feathers budding out of her skull, but the only real bad thing in them is that one white wing. Helena’s right arm, Sarah’s left arm. No fingers on that wing. Just hasty brushstrokes and not even nearly enough to fly.

They’re twelve when they’re let out into the lab proper, where the rest of the flock splashes in the deflated kiddie pool left out by some well-meaning scientist or another.

(There is no thing as a well-meaning scientist but, well. They’re young.)

Girl-tongues are cruel, swan-tongues are crueler – all those _teeth_. Flock says: _you’re not right_. Flock says: _you’re not a bird_. Flock says: _you’re one of the men with needles_ , because they don’t understand anything by halves and that’s all Sarah and Helena are, halves.

“We’re like you,” Helena says. She dribbles spit-blood around her tongue-teeth as she goes, but she tries to say it. She tugs them closer.

Sarah holds back. Someone in the crowd is hissing, and Sarah does not want to die. If she had two wings she could fly away from all of this, fly and keep flying until she found whatever home would take her. If she didn’t have any wings she could run away from this. But she is herself, and all she has is one wing and her hand holding Helena’s hand. She pulls her sister back.

“I don’t think we are,” she says, voice low. A girl steps out of the kiddie pool, feet bare and webbed on the tile of the laboratory floor. She steps closer, closer. Her eyes are dark black pools. Her wings have hands on them, fingers reaching desperate from between feathers – but Helena and Sarah can’t see that, because her wings are folded behind her as she walks.

 _Get out_ , she says, and she opens her wings wide – so wide Helena and Sarah can finally, finally see her hands. Sarah tugs Helena backwards even as Helena screams, flaps her own wing wide but not wide enough. The rest of the flock is arching necks and screaming low in their throats. Girls can be cruel, god, girls can be cruel.

The door to the laboratory is locked. No one has introduced Helena and Sarah to the concept of one-way mirrors, so when they start yelling _help_ they don’t know who to yell it to.

They’re taken back to their own chamber afterwards. Sarah spits her last baby tooth into her hand, touches all the places where her face is swollen. She only touches them with her right hand.

Helena’s feathers are crushed and bent and she’s trying to fit them back into place but she can’t. Sarah smoothes some of them out for her. Helena is breathing in rattling gasps, and that’s not just because of all the bruises.

“I hate them,” she says. “I don’t want them to be family.”

“They’re not,” Sarah says. “I’d never hurt someone like that.” (She’s young.) “They’re idiots, and they’re cruel, and we’re not them. Got it?”

Helena’s feathers are back into place, as much as Sarah can get them there. Doesn’t matter, really – not like Helena would fly with that wing, no matter what Sarah did to try and fix it.

“We’re not anybody,” Helena says.

“We’re us,” Sarah says. “Don’t need anyone else, alright?”

Helena nods. She lifts her crumpled wing and tucks her head under it, so: the talking is done, so: Helena is going to sleep under the searing hum of the lab-lights. Sarah watches her for a minute and then stands up, walks around the room in circles. As she goes she passes by the mirror, over and over again. She doesn’t look at it anymore. After a while, she’d stopped looking.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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